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<h2>STORY OF THE DOOR</h2>
<p>
Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance that was never
lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in
sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable. At friendly
meetings, and when the wine was to his taste, something eminently human
beaconed from his eye; something indeed which never found its way into his
talk, but which spoke not only in these silent symbols of the after-dinner
face, but more often and loudly in the acts of his life. He was austere with
himself; drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages; and
though he enjoyed the theatre, had not crossed the doors of one for twenty
years. But he had an approved tolerance for others; sometimes wondering, almost
with envy, at the high pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; and in
any extremity inclined to help rather than to reprove. “I incline to
Cain’s heresy,” he used to say quaintly: “I let my brother go
to the devil in his own way.” In this character, it was frequently his
fortune to be the last reputable acquaintance and the last good influence in
the lives of downgoing men. And to such as these, so long as they came about
his chambers, he never marked a shade of change in his demeanour.
</p>
<p>
No doubt the feat was easy to Mr. Utterson; for he was undemonstrative at the
best, and even his friendship seemed to be founded in a similar catholicity of
good-nature. It is the mark of a modest man to accept his friendly circle
ready-made from the hands of opportunity; and that was the lawyer’s way.
His friends were those of his own blood or those whom he had known the longest;
his affections, like ivy, were the growth of time, they implied no aptness in
the object. Hence, no doubt the bond that united him to Mr. Richard Enfield,
his distant kinsman, the well-known man about town. It was a nut to crack for
many, what these two could see in each other, or what subject they could find
in common. It was reported by those who encountered them in their Sunday walks,
that they said nothing, looked singularly dull and would hail with obvious
relief the appearance of a friend. For all that, the two men put the greatest
store by these excursions, counted them the chief jewel of each week, and not
only set aside occasions of pleasure, but even resisted the calls of business,
that they might enjoy them uninterrupted.
</p>
<p>
It chanced on one of these rambles that their way led them down a by-street in
a busy quarter of London. The street was small and what is called quiet, but it
drove a thriving trade on the weekdays. The inhabitants were all doing well, it
seemed and all emulously hoping to do better still, and laying out the surplus
of their grains in coquetry; so that the shop fronts stood along that
thoroughfare with an air of invitation, like rows of smiling saleswomen. Even
on Sunday, when it veiled its more florid charms and lay comparatively empty of
passage, the street shone out in contrast to its dingy neighbourhood, like a
fire in a forest; and with its freshly painted shutters, well-polished brasses,
and general cleanliness and gaiety of note, instantly caught and pleased the
eye of the passenger.
</p>
<p>
Two doors from one corner, on the left hand going east the line was broken by
the entry of a court; and just at that point a certain sinister block of
building thrust forward its gable on the street. It was two storeys high;
showed no window, nothing but a door on the lower storey and a blind forehead
of discoloured wall on the upper; and bore in every feature, the marks of
prolonged and sordid negligence. The door, which was equipped with neither bell
nor knocker, was blistered and distained. Tramps slouched into the recess and
struck matches on the panels; children kept shop upon the steps; the schoolboy
had tried his knife on the mouldings; and for close on a generation, no one had
appeared to drive away these random visitors or to repair their ravages.
</p>
<p>
Mr. Enfield and the lawyer were on the other side of the by-street; but when
they came abreast of the entry, the former lifted up his cane and pointed.
</p>
<p>
“Did you ever remark that door?” he asked; and when his companion
had replied in the affirmative, “It is connected in my mind,” added
he, “with a very odd story.”
</p>
<p>
“Indeed?” said Mr. Utterson, with a slight change of voice,
“and what was that?”
</p>
<p>
“Well, it was this way,” returned Mr. Enfield: “I was coming
home from some place at the end of the world, about three o’clock of a
black winter morning, and my way lay through a part of town where there was
literally nothing to be seen but lamps. Street after street and all the folks
asleep—street after street, all lighted up as if for a procession and all
as empty as a church—till at last I got into that state of mind when a
man listens and listens and begins to long for the sight of a policeman. All at
once, I saw two figures: one a little man who was stumping along eastward at a
good walk, and the other a girl of maybe eight or ten who was running as hard
as she was able down a cross street. Well, sir, the two ran into one another
naturally enough at the corner; and then came the horrible part of the thing;
for the man trampled calmly over the child’s body and left her screaming
on the ground. It sounds nothing to hear, but it was hellish to see. It
wasn’t like a man; it was like some damned Juggernaut. I gave a few
halloa, took to my heels, collared my gentleman, and brought him back to where
there was already quite a group about the screaming child. He was perfectly
cool and made no resistance, but gave me one look, so ugly that it brought out
the sweat on me like running. The people who had turned out were the
girl’s own family; and pretty soon, the doctor, for whom she had been
sent put in his appearance. Well, the child was not much the worse, more
frightened, according to the sawbones; and there you might have supposed would
be an end to it. But there was one curious circumstance. I had taken a loathing
to my gentleman at first sight. So had the child’s family, which was only
natural. But the doctor’s case was what struck me. He was the usual cut
and dry apothecary, of no particular age and colour, with a strong Edinburgh
accent and about as emotional as a bagpipe. Well, sir, he was like the rest of
us; every time he looked at my prisoner, I saw that sawbones turn sick and
white with the desire to kill him. I knew what was in his mind, just as he knew
what was in mine; and killing being out of the question, we did the next best.
We told the man we could and would make such a scandal out of this as should
make his name stink from one end of London to the other. If he had any friends
or any credit, we undertook that he should lose them. And all the time, as we
were pitching it in red hot, we were keeping the women off him as best we could
for they were as wild as harpies. I never saw a circle of such hateful faces;
and there was the man in the middle, with a kind of black sneering
coolness—frightened too, I could see that—but carrying it off, sir,
really like Satan. ‘If you choose to make capital out of this
accident,’ said he, ‘I am naturally helpless. No gentleman but
wishes to avoid a scene,’ says he. ‘Name your figure.’ Well,
we screwed him up to a hundred pounds for the child’s family; he would
have clearly liked to stick out; but there was something about the lot of us
that meant mischief, and at last he struck. The next thing was to get the
money; and where do you think he carried us but to that place with the
door?—whipped out a key, went in, and presently came back with the matter
of ten pounds in gold and a cheque for the balance on Coutts’s, drawn
payable to bearer and signed with a name that I can’t mention, though
it’s one of the points of my story, but it was a name at least very well
known and often printed. The figure was stiff; but the signature was good for
more than that if it was only genuine. I took the liberty of pointing out to my
gentleman that the whole business looked apocryphal, and that a man does not,
in real life, walk into a cellar door at four in the morning and come out with
another man’s cheque for close upon a hundred pounds. But he was quite
easy and sneering. ‘Set your mind at rest,’ says he, ‘I will
stay with you till the banks open and cash the cheque myself.’ So we all
set off, the doctor, and the child’s father, and our friend and myself,
and passed the rest of the night in my chambers; and next day, when we had
breakfasted, went in a body to the bank. I gave in the cheque myself, and said
I had every reason to believe it was a forgery. Not a bit of it. The cheque was
genuine.”
</p>
<p>
“Tut-tut!” said Mr. Utterson.
</p>
<p>
“I see you feel as I do,” said Mr. Enfield. “Yes, it’s
a bad story. For my man was a fellow that nobody could have to do with, a
really damnable man; and the person that drew the cheque is the very pink of
the proprieties, celebrated too, and (what makes it worse) one of your fellows
who do what they call good. Blackmail, I suppose; an honest man paying through
the nose for some of the capers of his youth. Black Mail House is what I call
the place with the door, in consequence. Though even that, you know, is far
from explaining all,” he added, and with the words fell into a vein of
musing.
</p>
<p>
From this he was recalled by Mr. Utterson asking rather suddenly: “And
you don’t know if the drawer of the cheque lives there?”
</p>
<p>
“A likely place, isn’t it?” returned Mr. Enfield. “But
I happen to have noticed his address; he lives in some square or other.”
</p>
<p>
“And you never asked about the—place with the door?” said Mr.
Utterson.
</p>
<p>
“No, sir; I had a delicacy,” was the reply. “I feel very
strongly about putting questions; it partakes too much of the style of the day
of judgment. You start a question, and it’s like starting a stone. You
sit quietly on the top of a hill; and away the stone goes, starting others; and
presently some bland old bird (the last you would have thought of) is knocked
on the head in his own back garden and the family have to change their name. No
sir, I make it a rule of mine: the more it looks like Queer Street, the less I
ask.”
</p>
<p>
“A very good rule, too,” said the lawyer.
</p>
<p>
“But I have studied the place for myself,” continued Mr. Enfield.
“It seems scarcely a house. There is no other door, and nobody goes in or
out of that one but, once in a great while, the gentleman of my adventure.
There are three windows looking on the court on the first floor; none below;
the windows are always shut but they’re clean. And then there is a
chimney which is generally smoking; so somebody must live there. And yet
it’s not so sure; for the buildings are so packed together about the
court, that it’s hard to say where one ends and another begins.”
</p>
<p>
The pair walked on again for a while in silence; and then
“Enfield,” said Mr. Utterson, “that’s a good rule of
yours.”
</p>
<p>
“Yes, I think it is,” returned Enfield.
</p>
<p>
“But for all that,” continued the lawyer, “there’s one
point I want to ask. I want to ask the name of that man who walked over the
child.”
</p>
<p>
“Well,” said Mr. Enfield, “I can’t see what harm it
would do. It was a man of the name of Hyde.”
</p>
<p>
“Hm,” said Mr. Utterson. “What sort of a man is he to
see?”
</p>
<p>
“He is not easy to describe. There is something wrong with his
appearance; something displeasing, something down-right detestable. I never saw
a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why. He must be deformed somewhere;
he gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I couldn’t specify the
point. He’s an extraordinary looking man, and yet I really can name
nothing out of the way. No, sir; I can make no hand of it; I can’t
describe him. And it’s not want of memory; for I declare I can see him
this moment.”
</p>
<p>
Mr. Utterson again walked some way in silence and obviously under a weight of
consideration. “You are sure he used a key?” he inquired at last.
</p>
<p>
“My dear sir...” began Enfield, surprised out of himself.
</p>
<p>
“Yes, I know,” said Utterson; “I know it must seem strange.
The fact is, if I do not ask you the name of the other party, it is because I
know it already. You see, Richard, your tale has gone home. If you have been
inexact in any point you had better correct it.”
</p>
<p>
“I think you might have warned me,” returned the other with a touch
of sullenness. “But I have been pedantically exact, as you call it. The
fellow had a key; and what’s more, he has it still. I saw him use it not
a week ago.”
</p>
<p>
Mr. Utterson sighed deeply but said never a word; and the young man presently
resumed. “Here is another lesson to say nothing,” said he. “I
am ashamed of my long tongue. Let us make a bargain never to refer to this
again.”
</p>
<p>
“With all my heart,” said the lawyer. “I shake hands on that,
Richard.”
</p>
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